The Dark Night Review

So last night I became what was probably the 30 millionth person to see The Dark Knight, which was very, very good. Like everyone else, I thought Heath Ledger was amazing and shoe-in to garner award accolades. The Dark Knight is a great comic adaption, very dark and much more complex than your average comic-based movie.

Now I know it's a movie that is based on a comic book, so I accept the fact that I have to suspend disbelief and accept a few plot holes and goofs in the movie. And while I really enjoyed the movie, I am not sure it lives up to its Titantic-sized hype.

For example, IMDB has this as the highest rated film of all time. Now it was a fun movie, but seriously, the best of all time? Hello, have people already forgotten about Maid in Manhattan and Short Circuit 2? What is wrong with you people?

Other issues I had with the movie:

* I enjoyed the movie, but it was way too long. You could have easily cut out 20 minutes and tightened up the film. Of course, I might have already been fatigued by the seven (!) movie previews and six (!!) commercials beforehand.

* Maggie Gyllenhaall as the female love interest still didn't do it for me. Sure she was an improvement over Katie Holmes, but was Scarlett Johansson unavailable for the movie? However, if they rewrote the script so that the Rachel Dawes character gets attached by a bear, then I would have preferred that Paris Hilton be cast in the role.

* There were a bunch of small things that annoyed me. First, the mayor's eyes looked like he was wearing eye liner. I swear to God. It’s all I could focus on when he was on the screen. Also, Christian Bale’s voice when he was dressed as Batman bugged the shit out of me. And since when did Batman's costume go from tights and a cape to body armor? Hello, I liked it more last time when they called it “Iron Man” (which I actually liked more than the “Dark Knight”).

* At the end of the movie, the Joker protects himself using dogs. Dogs, really? Is that really supposed to stop anyone? Jesus, he’s Batman, not a postal employee. Batman fought ninjas in the first movie without any weapons and did just fine but now he can’t defend himself against three dogs.

* I sat in the 3rd row after showing up only 30 minutes early and there were a couple of scenes where I thought I was going to go insane trying to keep track what was going on. I realize that's my problem and not the movie's but still. Two weeks later and it’s still selling out on a Tuesday night. Insane.

Overall, it was a very good movie but I must say that if you take Heath Ledger out of it, it’s about the same as the first movie which was good but not great. Although if you replaced him with Cameron Diaz, I'm not certain I would notice the difference, physically speaking.